Math, Madison, food, the Orioles, books, my kids.

Wall words

When I was a kid I had an anthology of Cyril Kornbluth stories and one detail in the introduction made a big impression on me: Kornbluth had lots of random notes among his papers, ideas, words, and phrases, and the editor of the anthology found it kind of poignant to look at these and wonder what stories they would have been. Especially — and this phrase has stuck with me all these years — “ghosts in a Martian department store.”

Anyway: while cleaning up the basement, I came across a pile of Post-its, which were on my wall when I was a creative writing grad student at Johns Hopkins in 1994. Each of these, I guess, was something I meant to use for something. I have no memory of what any of these mean. But here they are. Maybe you can use them. None of them is as good as “ghosts in a Martian department store.”

“every third person in the world”

The Admonitionist

assapanic

“Bald men, a lot of them — yeah, that might work!”

Rick Ziggurat

The First Church of Christ Plaintiff

Community Reaction to a Horrifying Event – Arndt

out of the fishy-smelling steam

reckless use of a highway

THE UNDERTAKER’S BIRTHDAY (Did the stripper shoot the corpse?)

The grandfatherly crook gives a motivational lecture to fifth-graders

“you slug in a ditch!”

Solomon “Duck-Duck” Goos

A first line: “Here’s something you might not know.”

“luz” — “an unidentified bone…”

The hobo community, waiting /expecting (esperar) for rich couples to pick them up.

The apocalypse counselor “If the sun went supernova, we wouldn’t know for eight minutes.”

“Of course, there is some element of risk involved in building a house out of oily rags.”

hidalgo = hijo de also (“son of something”) is the right etymology, and also a window into a time where you were either nobility (something) or not (nothing); cf. Shakespeare “Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife?” (_Measure for Measure_; the next line expands on this: “My lord, she may be a punk [prostitute]; for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife.”).